


You Have Got to Be Kidding

by awomannotagirl



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, F/F, Mating Cycles/In Heat, no g!p, so don't bother if that's your thing, that's right none of that girl!penis here, variant A/B/O biology and dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 09:33:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11056212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awomannotagirl/pseuds/awomannotagirl
Summary: The “I can’t believe I wrote this” piece that I never intended to write—that, in fact, I strongly intendednotto write: a completely unnecessary but thoroughly enjoyable foray into the filthy morass of A/B/O femslash, somewhat reimagined, with original characters in a contemporary setting. Featuring the ever-popular “I had no idea I was an omega but suddenly I’m in heat, whatever will I do” storyline.She didn’t understand this, she didn’t know what her body was going to do or how much worse it might get, she couldn’t protect herself from herself, and she was scared.She didn’t want to, but she called Jace.“Hey,” Jace answered, warm and breezy, as if they hadn’t gotten into a shouting match the last time they’d seen each other. Jace was like that. She didn’t take anything seriously.“Jace,” Callie croaked. “I need your help.”“Sure,” and she heard genuine concern. Jace did have a good heart, even when she was being a contrary asshole. “What can I do?”“I need you to come over.” She cleared her throat before she could get the next part out. “I need an alpha.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A Lengthy, Somewhat Apologetic Author’s Note:
> 
> When I first discovered fan fiction, I thought, What a weird and fun world this is. Very entertaining—but of course I’m never going to _write_ the stuff. Perish the thought. Nearly a hundred thousand words (and counting) later, I suppose I have to admit, I write fan fiction. 
> 
> When I came across A/B/O fiction, I thought, Okay, this is very weird. Fascinating, and hot in a slightly creepy way, but outlandish and bestial and definitely something I’d never, ever write.
> 
> Ahem. I wrote the thing I’d never, ever write. I got engaged with the idea of how people would behave if they actually, authentically lost control of themselves to the urges of their bodies. I got interested in the many, many variations on A/B/O physiology and society, and I found myself coming up with a variation of my own despite my internal insistence that I just wasn’t that into it. 
> 
> I’m fascinated with the reasons why so many people are so fascinated by the omegaverse (as evidenced by the sometimes staggering hit count of popular A/B/O fictions). A major reason is, as I touched on above, it’s hot. Femslash A/B/O incorporates two universally embarrassing and embarrassingly universal fantasies: the girl!penis/futanari, and a thinly veiled rape scenario. (Note that this genre is referred to as the “omegaverse,” not the “alphaverse.”) 
> 
> I have populated my version of the A/B/O universe with original characters. That’s what I’m comfortable with. I would contend that alpha and omega incarnations of existing characters aren’t, ever, truly variations of those characters; the alpha/omega is not merely an overlay or an alternate take but a fundamental transformation. The writer is therefore only borrowing appearance and some behavior or speech from an existing character in order to avoid having to go all the way in creating an original character. (You are free, of course, to disagree. There’s a comments section.)
> 
> I owe a debt to the often hilarious meta-works of norabombay ([Alphas, Betas, Omegas: A Primer](http://archiveofourown.org/works/403644/chapters/665489)), PrincessPestilence ([Sex and Gender: A Biological and Social Guide to the Omegaverse](http://archiveofourown.org/works/966128/chapters/1895413)), and Aurilia ([Strangely Satisfying](http://archiveofourown.org/works/885485)), and also to the more adventuresome and innovative writers of A/B/O fiction, particularly [Alsike](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Alsike/pseuds/Alsike). 
> 
> I did have fun with this. I hope other people do too.

“Heat?” Callie stared at the doctor as if he were out of his mind, because clearly he was out of his mind. “What are you talking about?”

The doctor looked up at her from the notes he was taking on a file—her file, she supposed—and met her eyes for the first time. “It’s a fairly normal presentation,” he said, a slight frown puckering his brow. “Is it significantly different from your previous heats?”

The fury she felt was out of proportion to the offense—he was just an overworked intern at a crowded public clinic, and her symptoms did kind of match up with what she had read about heat cycles—but that was how it had been the last few days. She managed not to scream at him, though, and said in a voice that was only a little gritty, “I’ve never _had_ a heat. I’m not an omega.”

He looked startled. “No? The physical markers are all—But, if you’ve never had a heat, then all right,” he veered off hastily. “You’re what, twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?” She nodded; her birthday had been the previous week. “Heat doesn’t always occur simultaneously with puberty, but I’ve never heard of a first heat this late. So, sure, let’s look at other possibilities. I’ll get some blood work done.”

 

_Heat._ The bloods came back, and every hormone that surges with heat had surged. Most damningly, most conclusively, there were the proteins unique to the omega physiology. “God _damn_ ,” Callie said.

“I can imagine this is something of a surprise,” the doctor said. She glared. He handed her a prescription and a brightly-colored pamphlet. “The pills will help lessen the more ... unpleasant ... effects,” he said. “And this is some information that might be useful.”

She glanced at the title: _Your First Heat._ It was clearly aimed at a preteen. She shoved it into her bag, too humiliated to look at it. 

“Please come back if you have any more questions,” the doctor said. “Or symptoms. This is really very unusual, and I’d ... we’d ... Well, we don’t want you to have any more difficulty than necessary.” The look in his eyes said _Journal article._

She growled out, “Thank you,” meaning _Fuck you_ , and left.

 

She couldn’t bring herself to read the pamphlet on the bus, so it wasn’t until she got home that she discovered that she should be eating foods rich in iron and B vitamins, avoiding refined carbohydrates, and drinking lots of water. All she had in the apartment that didn’t need preparation was a bag of M&Ms and a loaf of bread, but she was not going back out. She had started to shiver and she was having difficulty getting from the couch to the bathroom, much less to the grocery store.

The pamphlet was, speaking generously, of limited usefulness. It was full of bright, positive sentiments about becoming an adult and being perfectly normal, but it was maddeningly evasive about the details. The bland language didn’t begin to do justice to the reality of the symptoms she felt. _Feeling flushed or feverish:_ More like having waves of the sensation of a full-body third-degree burn. _Irritability:_ Yes, if wanting to kill everyone and destroy everything could be described as “irritability.” _Intermittent aches in the lower abdomen:_ “Intermittent” was much too tidy for the coming and going of deep surges that weren’t quite regular enough to prevent her from being surprised with each one, and “ache” was a limp, meaningless word that utterly failed to describe the clenching and burning that began just behind her pubic bone and throbbed out to fill her entire belly, and that wanted, wanted, wanted—that needed to be touched, pressed, massaged. 

_Fucked._ That’s what it wanted. It was deep in her cunt and it needed to be pounded out. How she hadn’t recognized it before ... But of course she had no reason to think such a thing, so she’d identified it as pain even though it wasn’t really pain. Some aches feel good, like the thick, heavy sensation in the legs after a long hard run, and some aches feel terrible, like a tension headache. This was both and neither. It was unmistakably something she had never felt before in her life. 

Still, now that she knew what it was, it was laughably obvious. Obvious, and appalling, and disgusting. She’d always defended the rights and the dignity of that tiny minority of people who lived in thrall to the intemperate demands of their bodies; at the same time, hadn’t she always also felt a secret measure of pity? Of contempt? When she thought about it at all, she hadn’t felt anything but lucky that she didn’t have to live like that. 

“When you are older, you will be able to relieve the symptoms of your physical cycle with the help of a partner. Until then, you may find it helpful to do certain self-care exercises.” Good god, even she knew more about it than that. And yet, as she tried to collect the bits of information she had, she realized that most of it was dubious, speculative, sensational, or all three. She didn’t _know_ much more than a seventh-grader giggling over lurid A/O pornography. 

The doctor had said, “If you know another omega who could give you some advice ...” He’d dried up when she glowered at him, but now she wished she’d let him finish. Was there some kind of hotline? An omega resource center?

She scrambled for her computer and started searching. There was some dry anatomy and physiology she couldn’t concentrate on, a lot of porn, some chats and forums. It was there, the information, and she was usually a patient and thorough researcher, but the waves of that pounding ache interrupted her ability to make any sense of what she found. 

She closed her eyes and groaned, gripping the edge of her kitchen table. Whether the sensations were beginning to feel more intense because she now knew what they were, or they were actually ramping up, she couldn’t—Yes, she could. She could tell. They were getting stronger. The flush on her skin was now coming with a wave of sweat and the tiny prickles of a thousand ant feet. The internal yawning and clenching was beginning to be not just unpleasant but painful. And, worst, she was no longer able to keep that rational, observing part of her brain functioning during the most intense part of the wave.

When she found herself on the couch at the end of a long, brain-emptying throb, on her knees with her head on her folded arms, ass in the air and her throat sore from the guttural sounds she was making, she realized that she could not get through this on her own. It would not kill her: she had gotten at least that much from the pamphlet and the couple of websites she’d been able to focus her eyes on. It would, however, be deeply miserable, and it was possible that she would do something stupid and harmful during the increasingly lengthy moments in which she was incapable of thinking. She didn’t understand this, she didn’t know what her body was going to do or how much worse it might get, she couldn’t protect herself from herself, and she was scared.

She didn’t want to, but she called Jace.

“Hey,” Jace answered, warm and breezy, as if they hadn’t gotten into a shouting match the last time they’d seen each other. Jace was like that. She didn’t take anything seriously. 

“Jace,” Callie croaked. “I need your help.”

“Sure,” and she heard genuine concern. Jace did have a good heart, even when she was being a contrary asshole. “What can I do?”

“I need you to come over.” She cleared her throat before she could get the next part out. “I need an alpha.”

There was a long, long pause, and she almost sobbed. Then, finally, “Are you sure?” Jace said slowly. “I mean, you must have partners you’ve known longer, right? I didn’t even know you were an omega.”

“Neither did I,” Callie spat, grunting out each word with an effort as another wave built. “It’s ... first ... time.”

“Oh jesus,” Jace said. “All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Hang on. And lock your door till I get there.”

All Callie could do was cry.

 

It was forever before she heard a knock. She looked at the clock: twenty-eight minutes. She staggered to the door, unlocked the deadbolt, and then collapsed into a ball.

The door swung open and Jace came in. Black jeans, black button-down shirt, chunky black shoes, her black hair cut short but needing a trim. All of it like always. “Wow, I could smell you down the hall,” she said in a bright chaffing tone that disappeared instantly when the closing door revealed Callie on the floor. “Oh honey,” she said, half under her breath. “I’m so sorry. This sucks. Let me—” and she reached down and took Callie’s arms gently.

Callie flinched when Jace touched her stinging skin, but the hands on her were actually deliciously soothing. It was the first thing that had felt really good in about two days. She found herself able to stand up, and Jace put her arms around her and pulled her close. The sudden ebb of the burn on her skin felt like a cool bath, and she actually laughed into Jace’s neck.

“Yeah, that’s better,” Jace murmured. “I’m gonna take care of you, okay?”

Callie couldn’t fathom why Jace was being so nice. Was it some kind of alpha imperative? All they’d ever done in their brief acquaintance was abrade each other, but this was sweet. So sweet. She pressed her mouth into Jace’s neck, just to taste at first, but her taste was so good, Callie had to use her teeth a little ...

Jace tensed, but not in an about-to-run way, more in a holding-herself-back way. “Shit, Callie,” she said indistinctly, and then, “All right, can you slow down a little? I know what you need. Let’s get comfortable.”

Even though Jace’s tone was matter-of-fact, what she’d said sounded indescribably filthy to Callie, and she growled a little. (Growled? The remaining part of her that was able to analyze and judge couldn’t believe the sound she’d just made.) But she pulled herself upright. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Take me to your bedroom,” Jace coached. “That’s where we want to be.”

Bed. Yes. She had a sudden clear vision of being in her bed, on her back, naked and spread open and Jace ... She growled, or groaned, or both, and Jace helped her get them through the apartment. Outside her bedroom she was hit again, and went to the floor again, and between the noises she was making and the lewd movements of her hips she knew she should be embarrassed, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. There wasn’t room.

Jace waited her out, rubbing her back, and when Callie could stand again, Jace took her in and guided her to the bed. “All right,” Jace said. “I know this isn’t very romantic or anything, but you really need ... Let’s just get your clothes off.”

That sounded like a wonderful idea. Jace did a lot of the work, though Callie was scrabbling desperately to help. “Lie down,” Jace said, and Callie did, obediently, though another pulse of that incandescent need hit her as soon as she did, making her grind her hips, spread her legs, push herself at Jace. 

“Beautiful,” Jace said, a tender wonder in her tone. “So beautiful.” She was pulling all her own clothes off as fast as she could, and a very few (an eternity of) tortuous moments later she scrambled onto the bed, onto Callie, and they both drank that first exquisite feeling of skin on skin. 

Callie sighed, but as soon as the torment of the fire in her skin eased, the ache inside exploded. She gasped, and she felt tears trickle from the corners of her eyes. 

“I know, baby,” Jace said low into her ear, pushing her fingers into Callie’s hair where it was escaping the thick, hasty ponytail she’d pulled it into. “I know. It’s gonna be all right. I’m gonna start with my hands, okay?”

Callie nodded, desperate and dumb, and then finally, finally, she felt Jace’s hand between her thighs, sliding quickly and firmly up to part her lips. Here too Jace’s touch was immediately soothing, but not yet close to where that ache was—she needed, she needed, she needed ...

Jace’s fingers found the entrance to Callie’s body. She murmured, “Oh yes, yes, you’re ready, I won’t make you wait. You’ve waited so long,” and with that she pushed inside and Callie cried aloud: from surprise, from pleasure, from the shock of how it felt, how good it felt.

She’d always liked being fucked but this was entirely new. It was not only the sensation of the fingers filling her and starting to pump inside her; it was relief, the nearly instant relief from the insistent, unpleasant ache. But she was also more sensitive, and differently sensitive, than she’d ever been. Every movement of Jace’s hand, everywhere she touched, the slide of her fingers, the way her knuckles pushed at the mouth of Callie’s cunt, it was all overwhelmingly wonderful. Callie grabbed her own knees, spread herself wider. _More more more,_ she thought, and there was more.

Jace was still muttering into her ear, but it was just sound. All that mattered were those fingers, touching the deepest part of her body, every thrust a delicious stab of pleasure so extreme it crossed toward pain. Maybe it was pain, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t care. She only wanted it never to stop.

She had never been more demanding or less self-conscious. The vanishingly small part of herself that was not consumed with being rhythmically, roughly, thoroughly fucked was appreciating the liberation she was experiencing. She had rarely, if ever, felt really sexy: she was always thinking so hard, hyperaware of her physical flaws—the thickness of her thighs, the ample flesh of her belly and breasts—and unable to shake the conviction that her lovers must feel the same. She loved the muscle and power of her body, but she always doubted that other people did. Right now, though, she felt like the embodiment of sex itself, the sun of sexuality pulling mortals into helpless orbit. 

Jace moved her thigh behind her hand to strengthen the thrust. With every movement she touched something deeper and better. Callie was crying openly now, but laughing too, her chest opening up even as her cunt did. 

Then Jace shifted, lifting herself up to put the whole weight of her body behind each rough thrust. “Yeah, yeah,” she said, talking more than half to herself. “You’re gonna come soon, honey, you’ll come like this, open for me.”

Callie wanted to object that she never came just from fucking but she couldn’t actually form words, and then the point got obscured as a ball of sweet fire began to form inside where Jace’s fingers hit deepest, and even as she tried to examine this new feeling it burst and swept through her.

She lay, panting, dizzy, and stunned, as this entirely novel kind of orgasm pulsed again and again, a little less each time, and Jace slowed and finally stilled inside her. Callie found she was clenching her thighs around Jace’s wrist, and she made herself let go slightly, but Jace didn’t pull out.

“Wow,” Jace said, deep and sincere.

“Wow,” Callie agreed.

“Feel better?”

“Yes. Thank you,” she said, suddenly self-conscious as she hadn’t been before. “Thank you so much.”

Jace laughed, and Callie felt the fingertips inside her move slightly, causing another full-body shiver. “Don’t thank me. At least not yet.”

Callie frowned. “What do you mean, not yet?”

“We aren’t done,” Jace said. “Not even close.” She sounded confident but not as if she were about to give a know-it-all lecture, the way she sometimes did. “I’m sure that was a relief”—Callie snorted at the understatement—“but it’ll build up again.”

“How long will it take before I ...” Callie trailed off, not sure she wanted an answer.

“Hard to say. With most people, most of the time, a few hours, six or eight? But a first heat is longer, and the later a first heat comes the more intense it is, and a first heat this late, I don’t even know.” Jace dropped her head onto Callie’s belly and said something that Callie was pretty sure was “I don’t care.”

Callie stretched her arms over her head, blessedly relaxed, and then moved a hand down into Jace’s hair. She could feel Jace’s breath on her belly and she was still pleasantly full of Jace’s hand, which she didn’t usually like after she came but this was ... 

Jace’s _hand_. “How many fingers do you have in me?” she asked. She definitely felt stretched out and huge inside, and also completely full, and two fingers couldn’t possibly ...

“Four,” Jace said matter-of-factly. “Up to the knuckles.”

“Oh my god.”

“You’ll want even more later,” Jace said, as if she were talking about the weather.

“There _isn’t_ any more.”

Jace moved her head so that she was looking up into Callie’s eyes. “Sure there is,” she said, and wiggled her thumb, which was right over Callie’s clit and made her jump.

“There is no way,” Callie said positively. “I’ve heard of people doing that, but there’s no way. I can’t.”

“Mmm.” Jace made a noise that could have been agreement or disagreement. “Want me to pull out?” 

“No,” Callie shot back, instantly and with certainty. In fact, she was starting to feel—She couldn’t. She couldn’t want to be fucked again, not this soon, not after that gigantic orgasm, not before Jace had even taken her fingers out.

But she did. She could feel that insistent ache coming back. What was different, though, was that her cunt was already full of Jace, pressing just where the ache originated, so instead of feeling like a desperate hollowness it felt like a growing knot of sweetness that only needed a little push to release ...

She was moving her hips. Jace was laughing.


	2. Chapter 2

She came again less than a minute later, hands flat against the headboard, crying out hoarsely—maybe not as hard as the first time, but still much stronger and longer than anything she’d ever felt before. And she realized also, coming down as she was teased through the aftershocks, that Jace was right: She wanted more.

This time, though, Jace spread her free hand over Callie’s abdomen and drew herself out. Callie groaned. “Jace,” she said, appalled by how needy and desperate she sounded. 

“I’ll be back,” Jace promised, leaning down to kiss Callie right below the belly button. “You gotta let a girl go to the bathroom.” She slid off the bed and out of the bedroom. “I have to call in to work, too,” she added as she shut the door.

Callie lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, reveling in the moment of feeling—well, not _normal_ , but not incapable of thinking. She considered Jace’s last words. _Work._ Jace was missing work for this, for her sake. So was she, for that matter, though she wasn’t due to teach again until the end of the week. The brazenness of what she’d done suddenly hit her. She’d called up a near-stranger (she’d met Jace, what, twice? three times?) and demanded that she drop everything in her life, including her professional commitments, to spend several hours having sex with her. She didn’t know if Jace was even attracted to her.

She ought to feel embarrassed, she supposed. Maybe in a little while, after this was over, she would. 

Jace returned after a few minutes, holding a tall glass full of water. Apparently she’d just gone and made herself at home in Callie’s kitchen, which Callie thought she ought to be annoyed about, but she was so thirsty at the sight of the glass that she didn’t care. She took the water and drank greedily, feeling the coolness fill her belly and chest. 

“We have to be careful to stay hydrated,” Jace said. “And fed. It won’t kill you not to eat for a couple of days, but it’d feel pretty awful when this is over.”

The last thing in the world Callie could imagine wanting was food, but she didn’t protest. She was trying not to get agitated about anything, since she figured she was on a hair trigger for pretty much every emotional expression: fury, sobbing, lust.

Then something Jace had just said registered. “A couple of _days_?”

“Could be,” Jace answered, apparently unfazed. “Like I said, a first heat this late, it could take a while.”

Callie knew she should be horrified by this. Two days as a slave to the demands of her vagina? Unthinkable. Unreasonable. But in fact what she felt was an equal measure of anticipation and greed. Jace was going to fuck her as much as she wanted, as long as she wanted, as hard as she wanted ... and she wanted a _lot._ She made a noise in her throat and, unconsciously, writhed.

Jace’s hands were on her right away. “Feeling it, baby?” she said, stroking Callie’s face, her neck, down between her breasts, out to her sides and over her belly.

“It’s okay,” Callie told her, but as she said it, it became less true. She could tell Jace was trying to touch her in a way that was soothing without being arousing, but she honestly didn’t think there was such a thing right now. Even the feeling of Jace’s weight next to her on the bed was indescribably sexy. It made her imagine that weight on top of her, moving against her, driving into her—

She rolled to her side and pulled Jace to her, threading her fingers into the short hair at the back of Jace’s head and bringing her mouth to hers. As she touched Jace’s lips with her own, she realized that this was their first kiss—that Jace had fucked her into oblivion, twice, before they’d gotten to the preliminaries. Not that this kiss had any romantic pretense. She had her tongue in Jace’s mouth before she’d properly registered what her lips felt like; Jace, too, was thrusting and sucking, all insistent tongue and tooth. 

The ache, again. Whether kissing was reviving it or whether it had been lurking there driving the kissing, the ache was back, and it bloomed rapidly. “Oh,” Callie gasped, into Jace’s mouth, and Jace recognized it immediately.

“More, baby?” she said, the words obscured by Callie’s lips, and flipped Callie onto her back. Then—then she sat up and moved away. The groan Callie gave brought her back, just for a moment. “Let me get some stuff. I’m not going anywhere.” True to her word, she was off the bed only long enough to grab her black backpack. 

She unzipped it, rummaged momentarily, and tossed a bottle onto the bed. “You don’t seem like you need lube,” she said, grinning, “but I’m not going to let you get any sorer than you have to be.” Following the bottle came a couple of dildos, the jumbled straps of a harness, and a long black thing with a bulb on one end and a handle on the other.

“What’s that?” Callie asked, pointing at the last item. 

“That’s a lot of fun,” Jace answered. “And easier on my wrists.” She picked it up. “Want to try it?”

“God, yes,” Callie breathed, eager for almost anything that would get Jace inside her.

Jace knelt between Callie’s legs and pushed her knees open. “Wow,” she said, staring frankly. The look on her face was half worship, half avarice. She poured lube onto the bulbous end of her toy, and spread Callie’s labia with her cool fingers.

Callie’s inner lips were so sensitive that she jumped when the lube-slick bulb touched the opening of her body. “Okay?” Jace asked, and “Yes, yes, yes,” Callie answered, pushing her hips up into the weight of the toy. The head felt heavy and substantial and she wanted it desperately. She felt like half her body was cunt: pounding, aching, demanding cunt.

Jace pressed forward. The ball end of the toy was big—not quite tennis-ball-sized, but not far off. Under ordinary circumstances Callie wouldn’t even have entertained the notion of such a thing entering her, but today she raised her hips up, eager to take it in. Jace pushed back, twisting the handle slowly from side to side (and oh god that was _good,_ that friction against her opening), and Callie felt the enormous thing stretching her, penetrating her. It burned, but the burn felt good, and just under that burn was an incredible pleasure.

“Breathe,” Jace said, and Callie did, realizing only when the sweet air rushed in that she’d been holding her breath. “Keep breathing,” Jace said softly, putting a hand next to Callie’s hip and bearing down further. Callie gasped and then breathed deeply, in, out, in, out, as the monstrous ball stretched her open and pushed and twisted against every point of her entrance in an ecstasy of sensation. Jace shifted her grip slightly so that she was pushing in and up against the anterior wall of Callie’s vagina, and the resulting rush of liquid pleasure pulled a deep, inarticulate sound from Callie’s throat. 

And then the widest part of the ball was right _there_ , oh yes, and Callie bore down and opened for it, and with a last slide it was inside her and she was gloriously, completely full, as she had never been before in her life. Every millimeter of her tender inner flesh was being stretched and stroked by this enormous beautiful pressure. “Oh oh oh” tore from her throat as Jace pushed and pulled the handle gently, very gently. Jace wasn’t fucking her, exactly; the thing that possessed her was so huge that it couldn’t move in and out, it instead moved her entire cunt within her body. 

“I’ll just hold, okay?” Jace said. “Move yourself against me.”

Callie found that this worked. It was delightful, incredible, to control the sensation by simply rocking herself forward and back with her heels. She was probably moving no more than an inch or two, but the feeling was indescribably powerful. 

“Do you want me to touch your clit?”

Callie shook her head, reaching down herself instead. Her clit was swollen and rubbery against her fingers, and it felt as if it had been shifted outward by the bulb that filled her. Logically she knew that wasn’t physically possible but everything felt different, bigger, rawer, hungrier. She pinched gently with her middle and ring finger on either side of her clit, stroked just a little, then started to circle—

—and _goddamn_ she came again. This time her muscles clenched the ball inside her, and that itself felt so good that it made her come harder, which made her clench harder, and she was in a feedback loop of intensifying climax for a good thirty seconds. 

“Jesus,” she said, when she could speak. 

Jace was still kneeling between Callie’s lewdly spread legs, with an intent, completely focused expression. “You okay?” she asked. 

“Okay,” Callie agreed. “So much better than okay.” She let her head fall back, feeling drowsy and almost sated. Tiny ripples continued to pulse inside her. And then she started to feel movement—gentle, subtle movement, almost unnoticeable, but delicious. 

She opened her eyes, and she could see that Jace was rotating her wrist just slightly, one way, then the other. She grinned when Callie caught her eye. “Good?”

“Good,” Callie said, and let her eyes close again. She floated on the sensation of that tiny movement. Each time Jace gave that slight twist, the ball filling Callie turned within her, stroking every inch of her inside. After a few minutes, she realized that Jace was moving just a little more, just a little further. The movement and the sensation built very, very slowly, but inexorably. Then Jace started to push at the end of each twist, just a little. It sent a shock of pleasure all the way through Callie’s body and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. 

Jace increased everything she was doing—pressure, depth, movement, rotation—very, very patiently. It ramped up so gradually that Callie only realized that she was again being fucked hard and deep when she could hear the wet smacks of the ball moving in her cunt. By then she was giving out a continuous low moan punctuated by an involuntary “huh” every time Jace pushed to her depth. She’d never been so thoroughly relaxed while she was being so thoroughly pounded. For once, she wasn’t overthinking or indeed thinking at all; she wasn’t worrying about what her partner was feeling, about how long it was taking her to come or how hard she was making her work. She was dreamily disconnected from everything but the implacable, gorgeous movement inside her. 

After an uncountable time of this, a light, warm buzz began to spread over her like fire consuming a piece of paper. When her whole body was alive with the dance of her nerves, sharp ecstasy seized her, everywhere at once. Her thighs clamped shut and she jackknifed, convulsing with the enormousness of the sensation. It held her for longer than she thought it was possible to bear, and when she was at last able to relax and open her eyes, Jace was staring at her in awe.

“Holy shit,” Callie said, laughing weakly.

“That was … that was …” Jace shook her head slowly, her eyes wide. “I have never seen anything even a little like that.” She reached over Callie’s limp body and picked up the long-handled bulb that had just brought her to that climax. “It shot out of you,” she said.

“Uh huh,” Callie said. She hadn’t felt it, but she could tell she was empty now. That was fine. Everything was fine. She was entirely fine. “Jace … ’m sorry but … think I’m gonna …” 

“Go ahead, baby,” Jace said, stroking her hair. “Sleep.”

Callie slept.


	3. Chapter 3

When she woke, Jace wasn’t in the bed, and the nagging hollow ache was back. Not bad, but not gone. Callie sighed. It was hard to believe that marathon fuckfest hadn’t satisfied her stupid body. It was even harder to believe that she wasn’t in hideous pain, but she wasn’t. She touched herself experimentally and, astonishingly, she was hardly even tender, though still (again?) wet and soft. 

Jace poked her head in through the door. “Hey babe! You’re awake.”

“How long was I out?”

Jace glanced back into the living room. “About three hours. That’s great. You’ve got to rest whenever you can.” She grimaced. “It’s not like it is in porn, you know. Those folks can take a day between takes if they have to. In real life, fucking for six hours is exhausting, and six hours doesn’t necessarily even do it.”

“Speaking of which …” Callie made an apologetic face. “It hasn’t done it.”

“I didn’t think it would have,” Jace said. “Is it bad?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s try to eat something. I fixed some food, kind of.”

Jace had put black beans over rice, grated cheese over it, and thrown some steamed broccoli on top. Callie ate gratefully. “Not gourmet fare,” Jace said, “but it’ll keep us going.”

“How come I’m not completely incapacitated?” Callie asked between mouthfuls. “I mean, jesus. I should be sore. No, I should be shredded.”

“Your vaginal walls are much thicker than a beta woman’s,” Jace said, shrugging. “And your body is pumping you full of endorphins and extra white blood cells and all sorts of shit.”

Callie had never heard someone use the word _beta_ to refer to what she’d thought of her whole life as _normal_. It was a perfectly correct term, she knew, but no one ever said it. Unless, apparently, they belonged to this invisible subculture of alphas and omegas. It was weirdly thrilling. 

“There’s so much I don’t know,” she said at last. 

“Join the club,” Jace said. “Nobody really understands it.”

Callie frowned. “But there must be research—” 

“There isn’t,” Jace said. “Not much. Nobody’s running around giving grants to people who study _typical_ human sexuality. Why would anyone be wasting their time and resources studying the physiology of a tiny minority?” Jace’s tone wasn’t bitter, she was simply reporting a fact, but what she said made Callie sit up in outrage. 

“Tiny? Sure, percentage-wise, but one or two percent of everyone in the world is still a fuckload of human beings. Jace, this is agony, and millions of people go through it! Over and over! I can’t believe that no one cares enough to assemble a basic understanding of the physical process. And there are like, what, two drugs that lessen the effects, and they’re hugely expensive.” She hadn’t been able to fill the prescription she’d gotten; her copay on the medication would have been more than a hundred dollars.

Jace put her bowl down on the nightstand and turned toward Callie, a little smile on her face. “Agony, huh? Is that what it is?” She put a hand on Callie’s bare knee and slid it up her thigh. “You totally hated every minute of what we did?”

Callie’s mouth was suddenly much less coordinated. She reached out to put her own bowl on the nightstand on her side, noticing abstractly that her hand was trembling, and she said, “Well. Now that you mention it, there are advantages.”

“One or two,” Jace agreed, grinning.

“The sex is pretty amazing,” Callie admitted.

“ _Pretty_ amazing?” Jace asked in mock indignation. “What’s a girl got to do to earn an unmodified ‘amazing’?”

Callie laughed. “All right. Amazing. I’ve never felt anything like that before.”

Jace suddenly looked much more serious. “You never would, if you weren’t an omega.” She pulled Callie closer to her, and Callie let herself melt into Jace’s body. “Would you give it up, now that you’ve felt it? Would you want to be fixed?” 

Callie was surprised by how outraged she felt.

“No one else gets this,” Jace went on softly, stroking Callie’s cheek with her knuckles. “The needing is hard, sure. But the way our bodies worked together completely perfectly, the very first time? The way you came? And came? And _came_? That doesn’t happen for betas.”

Callie nodded. Betas. She’d been one at this time yesterday, or thought she was. And no, she would not trade what she’d just experienced for anything. Certainly not for normal.

Jace had moved on from her cheek; she was drawing her fingertips up and down Callie’s back. Callie moaned softly, right into Jace’s ear, because all this touching was making her extremely aware of the ways she was not being touched. “Oh lover,” she whispered. “Oh lover. I need you.” And she did, more every moment.

She felt Jace smile where their cheeks were pressed together. “Of course,” Jace answered her, and then she rolled them so that Callie was on her back. Jace put her thigh between Callie’s and rocked into her, pushing up on her forearms so that she could look into Callie’s face. 

Callie looked back at her, at this woman she hardly knew who had given her everything she needed, things she didn’t even know she needed. She put her hands on Jace’s face, stroking her cheeks, touching her ears with her fingertips. “Why are you being so good to me?” she asked, voicing the question that she’d had all day.

Jace looked a little surprised. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she returned. Then she rolled her hips, moving her thigh against Callie’s cunt. “This,” she said, “is the best thing I’ve ever felt. I mean it.”

It didn’t make sense to Callie, but most things didn’t right now, and she was rapidly losing the ability to articulate anything anyway. Instead she made noises, hopeful pleading noises, and lifted a knee to press herself harder against Jace’s thigh. Jace kissed her, and for a good long while they both lost themselves in that, in the open, wet joining of their mouths, the play of their tongues. 

But Callie couldn’t do slow and easy for very long. Her body remembered what it had felt like to be satisfied, and it wanted to be satisfied again. The empty longing started to become hunger, and that quickly started to feel like starvation. She pushed her hips harder and more frantically against Jace, and the sounds in her throat became demands.

“All right, baby,” Jace said. “I know. I know. Hey, let’s turn you over. You haven’t been on your belly yet. Let’s try that.”

Callie would have done anything by now. Turning over, putting a pillow under her hips, whatever she had to do as long as it got Jace into her, and it did. As soon as she got herself arranged, legs as open as she could get them, hips tilted back to give easy access, Jace had her fingers buried inside her. Yes, on her belly was nice. Better than nice. Jace’s weight was perfect over her back, Jace’s arm slid up under her to hold a breast, and she pumped inside her, slow and firm. Jace’s fingertips drew up and down the muscled, ridged length of the front wall of her vagina, with plenty of pressure just from the way they lay. Callie let herself give contented, low sighs that finally merged into a kind of purr. 

This orgasm built deliberately, undramatically, and broke upon her in gentle, descending waves. Lying under Jace’s body in the quiet aftermath, Callie asked her question again, a slightly different way: “Why are you willing to do this? It just doesn’t seem like you’re getting much out of it.” 

Jace wriggled up the bed until, propped up on one elbow, she could look Callie in the face. “Really? You can’t tell?” 

“Tell what?”

“You really can’t,” Jace said. “I guess there’s no reason why you should. I don’t know if I can put it into words.” She paused, putting her hand on Callie’s back, and then said, “Satisfying you like this is the most incredible feeling. It’s not exactly like having an orgasm, and it’s not exactly like I’m feeling your orgasm, but it’s not _not_ like that either.” She sighed. “I’m doing a really bad job of explaining this. It just feels so good to soothe you with my body. When I make you come, I feel ecstatic. Full-body joy.”

Callie whispered, “That’s wonderful.” She was deeply grateful. She certainly couldn’t reciprocate in the state she was in; she was happy, although still doubtful, that Jace was getting some kind of reward. 

“Also,” Jace said, a little uncomfortably, “this might kind of be my fault.”

Callie rolled over onto her side, mirroring Jace’s position with her head on her hand, and laughed. “What, like your big bad alpha pheromones set off my heretofore dormant omega self?”

Jace looked embarrassed, but said, “Something like that, yeah.”

Callie looked at her skeptically. “That sounds like something out of a bad romance novel.”

Jace shrugged. “It’s a trope of A/O porn for a reason. Like I said, nobody really knows how all this works, but at least anecdotally there’s a link between being in the presence of a complimentary polysexual and entering heat.” She hesitated, and then said, “When I first came in and said I could smell you down the hall, I wasn’t really joking.”

Callie felt her cheeks heat. 

Jace hastened on: “It wasn’t literally a _scent_. I wasn’t smelling with my nose. It was more like a feeling all over my skin. Except it was inside my brain.” She sighed. “Anyway. That’s beside the point. Have you ever met a lesbian alpha before?”

Callie frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “Neither being a lesbian nor being an alpha are necessarily obvious. So maybe?”

“But you don’t know that you have,” Jace said. “And the odds are actually against it. The number of lesbians in the world is pretty small, as a percentage of all women. That Kinsey ten percent stuff is nonsense, and it was only about men in the first place. Two percent is more realistic. The number of alphas is even smaller—fewer among women than among men, and not too many men. Call it, generously, one percent.” She was getting into her argumentative persona; Callie usually found it deeply irritating but right now it seemed cute. “So what’s the Venn diagram overlap there? Half of everyone you meet is out to start with, ’cause you’re gay. One percent of two percent of fifty percent. That’s not a lot of people.” 

“No, I suppose not.” Callie fell silent, thinking, and suddenly something new occurred to her. “Omegas are just as rare. How many other lesbian omegas have you met?”

Jace looked embarrassed again—also, Callie thought, an adorable state for her—and said, “One that I know of. My ex. And technically she’s bi, I guess. At least, she’s with a guy now.”

“So how did you know you were an alpha?” 

“Blood test, when I was a kid. I’ve known since I was eight.” Jace cocked her head curiously. “Most kids get tested before puberty. You didn’t?” 

Callie shook her head. “I must not have. I think I’d remember my parents telling me something like that.”

“Yeah,” Jace said, “you sure do,” and looked distant for a moment. The hand that had slid from back to hip when Callie turned began to stroke her side, apparently unconsciously.

Callie rolled onto her back, taking Jace’s hand and putting it on her belly. “Keep doing that,” she murmured, and Jace shifted closer and moved her hand gently over the swell of Callie’s abdomen. Callie closed her eyes and smiled, beginning to feel just the stirring of her inextinguishable need. Now that she knew it would be sated, she could enjoy it. “How did you learn all this? There’s nothing out there, in”—she hesitated, not knowing exactly how to phrase it, and then it came to her—“in beta culture.”

“I’m on a listserv.”

Callie chuckled. Of course. “Is there one for omegas?”

“I’m sure there is. We’ll find it for you.” Jace smirked at her, letting her fingers move down over Callie’s pubic mound. “In a while.”


	4. Chapter 4

Over the next day they fell into a workable rhythm. Callie would gradually lose the ability to concentrate on anything other than the yawning hunger between her legs; they’d figure out a good position, Jace would fuck Callie with hands or toys or both through two or three climaxes, and then they’d have anywhere from forty-five minutes to four hours of relative normalcy. Then they each did a little work, answered email, and cooked meals. When they could, they slept.

The hours and the intervals of desperate sex melted and flowed together after the first frantic bouts. A couple of times Callie held herself back as long as she could, waiting until the edge of her want became painful, so she could re-experience that initial cool relief when Jace finally pushed into her. It was almost as good the second time, and the third.

They didn’t return to the ball on the handle. It had been the most intense sexual experience of Callie’s life, and she felt delicate about trying to repeat it. “Maybe someday,” Jace had said, with good humor, when Callie had demurred; that gave Callie a peculiar feeling of fondness and anticipation. They hadn’t discussed any future for this arrangement, and Callie wasn’t going to while she was still being seized by an irrational need to be plowed every couple of hours, but Jace’s reaction made her think ... maybe. 

Instead they tried every other position and combination that they could think of. Callie did things that she’d been hesitant even to fantasize about, and she did them with frank abandon. There was a lot to be said for the breakdown of even the pretense of inhibition. Callie had never been directive during sex; she’d always been shy about intimating that her partner wasn’t pleasing her. Now she found herself giving explicit orders that she wouldn’t even have been able to put into words a few days before. “Put your thumb right on my clit. Lower. Let me move your hand. Okay, there.” “Harder, but not so much in-and-out. _Harder._ That’s it.” “In my ass? Sure. Use lots of lube.” “Bring the mirror over here, I want to watch.”

Jace donned the harness and put Callie on her hands and knees, on her back with her feet on Jace’s shoulders, on the table, over the couch. The strap-on allowed Jace to use her hands on the rest of Callie’s body, which had been sadly neglected during this cunt-centric moment. When Jace finally admitted she was exhausted, Callie fucked herself on the dildo fastened to Jace’s hips, blessing all the hills she biked as she raised and sank, her quads straining.

Jace did, despite Callie’s outraged unbelief, get her whole hand inside her. It wasn’t even that difficult. The hardest part was being patient while Jace twisted and scissored and stretched her open slowly, gently. And then—it was as intense as the ball, but it was closer, more intimate. It was Jace, completely inside her, having her completely. It was the first time in Callie’s memory that she cried when she came, and Jace’s holding her and stroking her, soothing and reassuring her, filled her nearly as nourishingly as Jace’s hand had.

As time wore on Callie was able, after a first orgasm took the edge off, to give something back. Jace, of course, protested that she didn’t need anything, she was here for Callie, but she got strangely quiet once Callie’s mouth was on her. In the tumult of this heat Callie had almost (but not quite) forgotten how she loved going down on a woman, and Jace was exquisite: she felt and tasted and responded exactly how Callie wanted her to. There were moments, many moments, when she experienced the extra sense, the smelling inside her brain, that Jace had tried to describe. She couldn’t imagine feeling anyone but Jace that way. She told herself that it was only because she hadn’t; she didn’t believe in soulmates or one true loves or the polyformic mating bond that people talked about. She tongued and lipped and sucked Jace’s clit, she stroked and fucked her, explored every inch of her cunt, felt the rings of slick muscle grip her fingers as Jace came. Callie felt powerful and certain and complete, and she refused to entertain the notion that this might be something she would never find anywhere else. 

 

On the second day, after having been fucked into lucidity, Callie said, “I have to call my parents.”

Jace looked at her wide-eyed. “Um, what?”

“Not because of this,” Callie said, waving her hand between them. “Just, I haven’t checked in with them in a few days, and they’ll be getting anxious.” She sighed. “They don’t really do email, or I’d just send them a note.”

Jace nodded. “I’m lucky. My mom knows how to text. Much simpler.”

When Callie settled on the couch and dialed her parents’ number, she hadn’t expected to exchange anything but a breezy I’m-fine-how-are-you. But as soon as her mom answered and hollered into the house for her dad to pick up the other phone, she realized she wanted them to know.

Her dad asked, as always, “What’s new?”

“Well,” Callie said. “Kind of a big new thing.” She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I, uh. It turns out I am ...” For some reason she couldn’t say the word “omega.” She went for the technical, collective term. “I’m sexually polyformic.”

“Oh?” her dad said. His voice was higher than usual.

“Specifically,” she said, getting braver, “I’m an omega.”

There was a long silence. Her mom finally said, “Oh my.” 

Callie could have read all kinds of emotions into her mom’s tone, but one that was conspicuously absent was surprise. She said, a little aggressively, “You didn’t know, did you?”

The silence now was guilty.

“You did. You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

“Oh, honey,” her mother said. “There was a test, when you were young.”

“Very young,” her father added. “Too young.” In those two words, not directed at Callie, was the ghost of an old argument.

“And we just didn’t know,” her mom went on hastily. “No one in our family had ever ... and you didn’t seem to have any of the characteristics, and the years went by and nothing happened ...”

“We thought, Could the test be wrong? Or maybe you could carry the markers but never express any of the, whatever, symptoms?” Her dad’s voice pleaded for understanding. “We asked doctors. Nobody knew.”

“And we didn’t want you to feel, I don’t know, different, if you didn’t need to. So we didn’t say anything,” her mother ended. 

There was a moment of quiet, in which Callie struggled to understand what she was being told. Finally she said, in a deadly voice, “Do you have any idea what my last few days have been like?” She heard the intake of breath on the other end of the phone. “No, obviously not,” she went on. “I didn’t know what was happening to me. I thought I was dying. I thought I had _cancer_ or something.” That was a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit. She laid heavily on the sarcasm: “When in fact the only _danger_ I was in was of being gang-raped in an alleyway.”

“Callie,” her father said helplessly.

“We never meant ...” her mother started. Callie hung up.

After a few minutes, Jace came out of the bedroom. “Everything okay?”

“They knew,” Callie said tonelessly. “They knew and they didn’t tell me.”

Jace sat down next to her on the couch. “Is that so bad?” she asked.

Callie stared at her. “Fuck yes,” she said. “I could have been warned about this. I could have known what was happening to me.”

“But the tradeoff,” Jace said gently, “is that you would have been waiting all those years. And that might not have been so good for you.”

Callie frowned. “Do you think it wasn’t good for you?”

Jace, after a moment of silence, said, “No. I might have been a much easier person if I hadn’t known all my life that I was an alpha.”

“What do you mean?” Callie asked.

“You have met me, right?” Jace asked, and Callie smiled. “I’m kind of a jerk.”

Callie made a movement to disagree, and Jace held up a hand. “No, I am. I know. Give me that much credit.” Finally Callie shrugged, and Jace went on, “I have been all my life. Argumentative, contrary, never met a rule I didn’t want to break. Did I act the way I did because I was an alpha? Or because I _knew_ I was an alpha and I thought I should? Or maybe because I could get away with it, since everyone around me was always saying, _Oh, she’s just being all alpha._ I had a built-in excuse for being an asshole. And I used it.”

“I’m not an alpha,” Callie said, “and that’s all pretty much true of me too.”

“In a much more normal way,” Jace said. “Look at you. You’re a kick-ass human being. If you’d known your whole life that you were supposed to be indecisive and nonaggressive, wouldn’t you have been a little muted? Would the people around you have squashed you?”

“Who knows,” Callie said, a little annoyed. She had wanted to be angry at her parents, simply and justly.

“I like who you are,” Jace said, unexpectedly. “Whatever your folks did, it made you you, and I’m grateful.”

Callie had no idea what to say to that. But, against her better judgment, she liked it.

 

In the middle of the second night, during one of their lengthier naps, Callie surfaced from sleep filled with a desperate sadness, choking with tears. “Jace. Jace, I’m not pregnant. This isn’t going to get me pregnant.”

From the dark came a bleary reply: “No, it’s not.” 

“You have to get me pregnant,” Callie said, nearly hysterical. “I need to get pregnant.”

Jace turned on the light and stared at her, blinking, in the sudden brightness. “Okay,” she said, very slowly, with an exaggerated calmness, “what’s going on here?”

Callie, the tears still falling, was abruptly unsure. She had just been absolutely convinced that—what? That she wanted to have a baby? No, the baby part was remote and unrealized. She had wanted to be pregnant; she had _needed_ to be pregnant. In the light, looking at Jace’s sleepy, puzzled face, she realized that it had been some sort of emotional hallucination. Hormones, she supposed. _Fuck._

“Oh my god,” she said. “My brain is malfunctioning.”

“Yeah, it kind of is,” Jace said. “Not your fault.” She reached up and petted Callie on the cheek. “Can we go back to sleep?”

Callie lay back down as Jace turned the light back out. Her heart was still beating too fast. “Jace,” she said.

“Uh huh?”

“You are never going to tell anyone about what just happened. I never said it. I will deny it completely.”

“Seems wise,” Jace said, drowsily.

“I mean it.”

Jace stirred, turning onto her side toward her. “Callie,” she said, sounding a little more awake and very serious, “I’m never going to tell anyone about any of this. It’s yours and it’s private. You’ve done me an honor by letting me be here, and I’m not going to betray your trust in me.”

Callie’s eyes stung. Jace kept astonishing her. “God, I’m lucky,” she whispered.

“I’m lucky,” Jace corrected her. “Luckiest ever.”

“No, _I’m_ lucky,” Callie retorted, in a grade-school sing-song.

“Fine, we’re tied for lucky,” Jace said, affection in her voice. “Go to sleep.” 

 

The next morning it was over. When Callie woke, it was because she was done sleeping, not because she needed to be jackhammered. She was sore, which she hadn’t been before, and Jace’s body pressed next to hers just felt good, an ordinary good, not like salve on a burn.

Jace was still sleeping. Callie turned toward her and watched her breathe. The sweet fondness, she discovered, was not a biological artifact. She spent several minutes thinking through what that might mean. Absently, she reached out and stroked Jace’s hair.

“Mmm,” Jace murmured, and blinked her eyes open.

“I’m sorry,” Callie said contritely. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“’Sfine,” Jace said. She slid an arm around Callie. “You need me, baby?”

Callie shook her head. “I think it’s done,” she said. “I’m okay.”

Did Jace look fleetingly disappointed? After only the briefest hesitation, she smiled. “Good. Great. How are you feeling? Does it hurt?”

“Not as much as it ought to,” Callie said. “But yes, I’m a little sore.”

“Well, that’s not too bad,” Jace said. “Breakfast?”

“Sounds good,” Callie said. “I’m starving.” She got up and stretched, then grabbed the bathrobe that they’d been trading off in the rare moments that one of them needed to risk seeing other people—accepting pizza delivery, or getting the mail.

She went out to the kitchen and started getting out ingredients for omelettes. A few moments later Jace emerged from the bedroom, fully dressed. 

“Hey,” Callie greeted her. “Clothes, that’s novel.”

Jace grinned, a little shyly.

“What do you want in your omelette? I don’t have any tomatoes left, but there are still some mushrooms. Canned, I’m sorry. And cheese, I have cheese.”

Jace shifted her eyes away. “I think I should probably get going.”

Callie put the can opener down and walked around the kitchen island. She grabbed Jace by the shirt front. “I was afraid of this,” she said.

“Of what?” Jace was surprised into meeting Callie’s eyes. 

“That you’d get weird as soon as I was finished,” Callie said. 

“It’s not weird,” Jace said unconvincingly. “I just, I think you probably need your space back, right?”

“Yeah, in a bit,” Callie said. She hadn’t let go of Jace’s shirt, and now she used it to pull Jace to her. She kissed her, softly but with intention.

“Callie,” Jace muttered when her lips were free. “You don’t have to.”

Callie kissed her again. “No,” she agreed. “I don’t.” Another kiss, and this time Jace responded, just a little. “I like you,” she said, and rested her forehead against Jace’s. 

Jace laughed.

“What?” Callie said, aggrieved.

“We’re almost exactly the same height. I hadn’t noticed because we haven’t stood up for two days.”

Callie laughed too. Then she drew back and looked at Jace firmly. “You did a really incredible thing for me.” Jace opened her mouth but Callie put her fingers over it. “Uh uh. I’m not done.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “The most incredible thing is that you turned out to be awesome. Not just in an awesome-at-fucking-me way, but in an awesome-human-being way.” 

“I’m pretty awesome at fucking you, too,” Jace murmured.

“Yes, you are. Not the point here.” 

“What is the point, then?”

“The point? Right, the point.” Callie grinned. “The point is, I don’t want to just call you when I’m”—her voice stuck on the words, but she made herself say them—“in heat. I’d like to spend some time with you when I’m completely in my right mind.”

“I think wanting to spend time with me might conclusively demonstrate that you’re not in your right mind,” Jace said, her gaze drifting down. It was a little hard to tell with the olive tone of her skin, but Callie was pretty sure Jace was starting to blush.

“I like you,” Callie said again.

“So are you asking me on a date?” Jace looked up from lowered eyes, and Callie’s heart skipped.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “Yes, I am. And right now, I’m asking you to have breakfast with me, and hang out on my couch and hold me a little, and decompress from the last couple of days.” Jace looked hesitant, and Callie said, “It’s called aftercare. Look it up.”

Jace finally smiled. “Okay. Of course,” and she leaned forward and kissed Callie. 

Callie kissed her back, biting her lower lip gently, flicking her tongue. She broke away after a moment and said, “There is one thing I have to tell you.”

“What?”

“You know I’ve been reading that omega forum that you found. I still have the latest first heat of anybody I’ve read about on there, but there’s one woman in Australia who had hers almost as late, like twenty-seven and a half. She had a full two-day heat her first time, too. She’s almost forty now ...” Callie took a deep breath.

“What?”

“Her heats never got any shorter.”

Jace digested this. “You mean,” she said, deliberately, “that you might need to have your brains fucked out for two days every time you go into heat. Three times a year, at minimum.”

“I might.” 

Jace smiled, slow and full. “Good.”


End file.
